DETROIT – He has scored 30 goals or more in all of the 13 NHL seasons he has played at least 60 games, except for two – the two Luc Robitaille played for the Rangers.

“I take the responsibility for that,” Robitaille, four wins away from his first Stanley Cup, said before last night’s Game 1 of the Red Wings-Hurricanes Finals. “It was the first time in my career I didn’t get as much ice time as I’d been accustomed to, and I think I might have made a mistake the way I handled it.

“I didn’t know how to deal with playing less. I tried to change my game and do different things. There were some nights I think I was playing 12 minutes instead of 20, and I wasn’t as mentally alert as I should have been or needed to be.

“I learned a lot from that. I understand now that you still have to do the same things, you still have to play your own game, no matter how much ice time you get.”

Robitaille, now 36, scored 23 and 24 goals in 1995-96 and 1996-97, respectively, for the Blueshirts, 47 of the staggering 620 he has scored in a no questions asked Hall of Fame career. Except that there have been questions asked about Robitaille, who reached the Finals once before in 1993 with the Kings. There have been questions about Robitaille’s willingness to play away from the puck; questions about whether he was simply a scorer rather than a winner.

“If people feel that about me, I’ve never felt that about myself,” said Robitaille, who scored 30 this year after signing with the Wings as a free agent. “I’ve always played to win. Every player plays to win.”

If every player plays to win, not every team is willing to pay enough to achieve that goal. The Kings not only haven’t been willing to pay, they weren’t willing to pay Robitaille more than a courtesy call when his contract expired last summer.

“They told me two days before I was going to be a free agent that I should see what I could get and then come back to them,” Robitaille said. “I knew right then I was gone.

“I talked it over with my wife; we have kids in school and I didn’t want them to have to move at this stage of my career, so my first thought was to look for an opportunity with a team close to home.

“But equally as important, I wanted to go somewhere I could win. When Detroit called, it was really more than I could have hoped for. The funny thing is, when I heard the night before July 1 that they had traded for Dom [Hasek], I said, ‘Boy, are they going to be tough to beat,'” Robitaille said. “As soon as we got the call, my mind was made up.